I feel like we can see something similar in the trajectory of our politics. Go read a speech by dunno, Abraham Lincoln. It’s clear that it appeals to reason and tries to justify its positions logically. This doesn’t tell us that every single politician was therefore a honest and good faith advocate. But it tells us that society at large valued logic and rationality and consistency as fundamental to believable arguments enough that politicians felt a need to perform them, which is a good position to start from. Today a politician with the same style would likely be penalised because they’d appear to be boring and perhaps a bit too snotty compared to the Guys Just Like Us, who speak broken nonsense or parrot thoughtless slogans.
I feel like we can see something similar in the trajectory of our politics. Go read a speech by dunno, Abraham Lincoln. It’s clear that it appeals to reason and tries to justify its positions logically. This doesn’t tell us that every single politician was therefore a honest and good faith advocate. But it tells us that society at large valued logic and rationality and consistency as fundamental to believable arguments enough that politicians felt a need to perform them, which is a good position to start from. Today a politician with the same style would likely be penalised because they’d appear to be boring and perhaps a bit too snotty compared to the Guys Just Like Us, who speak broken nonsense or parrot thoughtless slogans.